How To Model, Texture, and Light A Gumball Machine

In this tutorial I show you how to model, texture and light a simple gum-ball machine using primitive shapes and deformers. I also set up a dynamics system to fill the machine with gum balls and light the machine using HDRI and the Sky Sampler. Then, we head in to Photoshop to do some final color correction.

Great tutorial man! Just a quick note that under the “Basic” tab of an objects attributes you can select X-Ray which will allow you to see through the object. It’s a little quicker than using a texture.

@mark: try using a spline wrap set to rail then tweak the curve display to make it thicker and thinner where it goes in and out of the knot. of course, you’ll have to draw the spline that makes the bow. you don’t need a tut for that, just practice.

Great stuff as always Nick, I noticed you had Vray plug-in installed , and was wondering if you was planning on doing any tuts based on Vray, good Vray tuts are hard to come by and i would love for you to do one 😉

nick, quick comment / question about the way you do fresnel on the reflection all the time. when you create a fresnel you then always mess with the brightness slider. it seems to me that the brightness slider does nothing at all to affect the look of a fresnel. is that true or am i missing something. i know the mix strength definitely affects a fresnel btw.

@lsslss One of Chris’ tutorial recently showed how to make the dynamics stay a away from an object. What you need to do is select the glass sphere, and in the dynamics tag, under ‘Collision’, tick the box that says ‘use’ and then in the ‘margin’ box give it something like ‘3cm’. That means the dynamics will always stay 3cm away from the collision object.

Hey Nick,
I just wanna say… I love all your tutorials! Since I found you, I watched every tutorial. I love Cinema4D and sometimes I had a little problems by understanding tutorials in english, because I’m german, but your tutorials are allways followable and I understand every step you made. So I just wanna say: Thank you for all your great work and all the inspiration you give us!

nick im trying to create the spiral downfall ramp that the gumballs go down but i cant seem to make a working spiraling ramp , when you get a chance could you make a tut explaining how to go about making it?

Two questions:
– Why not put the Dynamics tag on the cloner ?
– Why not use a Multi-shader for the gumballs color ?
I understand there is no “right way” but are there any perks in doing it like you did ?

@MonstaGraphicsAU I’ve not done this before, so sorry about the quality, but here is a very basic examble of making a spiral ramp. Hopefully it can give you some tips for your one. http://vimeo.com/32202250

I had a problem to create the top of the machine because I couldn’t bevel it to give a more realistic shape in the bottom (Some people had the same problem in their final renders).

My solution: Select the oil tank, delete the height and bottom, then you have the top of the gumball machine, chose bevel and scale the first segment at the bottom, making it smaller (so you have now a kind of base), then you can bevel the next segment (by selecting bevel) and have a rounded and smooth end.

The killer tips for me were:
– Using Cloth nurbs to create the glass wall / thickness. (Always used Explosion deformer before now)
– Spend more time in photoshop!
– Cheat to save time where acceptable.
– Experiment and have fun.

Yeah I watched his shatter tut and it’s great help, however I get stuck with making the balls acctually stay inside the sphere before the collision happens, they always seem to either explode out or just stay there without any dynamics to them… kind of hard to explain but I hope you get my drift.

There’s nothing wrong with using Deformers for modeling. I use them in conjunction with polygon modeling all the time. They are just tools like anything else. Whatever tool gets the job done the quickest is the best way.

My First tutorial with R13!! (cartwheels round room smashes through window) Managed a near identical image at the close. Managed to get my top cap matched up perfectly by matching the main sphere radius with the ‘spherify’ radius. Also for some reason couldnt find my cloth dude anywhere to thicken the main sphere. So i just doubled up the main sphere and made it smaller then re ran the gumballs! AS always, great job nick!

When I click on the deformer icon to get the drop down palette, it doesn’t show the names of the deformers next to each icon like I see in Nicks tutorial at 7:24. The deformer drop down menu is the only one that I have this issue with. Can anyone tell me how to change that? I’m using R13.

Thnx for the tut chris! I have a problem.. i have c4d broadcast 13 and when i put the dynamics tags and hit play just like you do nothing happens… it’s a software problem or a configuration problem? (sorry for my english)

I have this one question. It’s not related to this tutorial but I got an idea from it so… 🙂 I’ve made spheres to fall and I need to get some another object to fall too but not from frame 0 ! Let’s say that from frame 50… How to do that?

I don’t know if i’ve missed but have you or Chris done some basic animation tutorials? Is there comming if not?

Thank you and others some much who make these AWESOME tutorials for Cinema 4D! Just brilliant..

hi nick
I posted a link to your tutorial on my new blog.. hope you don’t mind..
Would be an honor if you had a look 🙂http://www.candystore.cc
thanks for wonderful posts and for being such a great teacher

first of all I would like to thank you because you made ??me broaden my knowledge in the area of ??3D modeling and animation, to be honest, I only had used cinema 4d five times and got a good result for a 13 year old boy who has no money to pay your texture pack and your HDRI light pack, I found some settings on the Internet for jobs created in cinema 4d and got the following result: http://i.imgur.com/45m5u.jpg keep helping me and all the curious who want to learn 3D modeling like me, you are an excellent “designer, I work more with special effects in photoshop image manipulation then had no problem getting the treatment that my own in my opinion was in fact very similar to yours.

Excuse my terrible english I m from Brazil,
Gabriel , you can call me CmGabriel…

Awesome tutorial! So I started this tutorial and I didn’t get very far haha, when I add the tags (to gumball and sphere) nothing happens (like when I press play, there is no animation) are there settings im missing or doing something wrong? Any help would be appreciated. – Greg

hey mate,
really cool tut,
Im a first step c4d newbie – and im having a probably silly issue – after adding the the rigid and the collider to the 10x10x10 grid – nothing happens when I press Play, no dynamics, nothing .
been over your steps 5 times and still nothing

Nick –
Thanks for all the great tutorials you and Chris have made! I discovered Cinema 4D in April 2012 and GSG in May, and I’m really enjoying them both. I recently purchased the Texture Kit and the Lighting Bundle and I am very pleased with both of them. I think I’ve seen just about all of your tutorials now (some of them multiple times) and I’m always amazed at how much really solid, relevant information you guys pack into each one. I know you’ve probably seen a hundred different versions of this project, but I finally gave the Gum Ball Machine tutorial a try and my result is here: https://vimeo.com/56874683
Thanks again.
– Marv

Amazing that something that looks as great as that can be done so surprisingly easy as long as you know how. Guess that’s the reason why there are lots of cool designs emerging everywhere. Thanks for the tutorial.

Hi..can i ask something..how to set the gumball position that you rendered to initial state..i mean that you have render the image in the middle frame..can you make this frame you rendered to the first frame?sorry bad english..

Dude. I just have to say that you’re the best thing to happen to the C4D community. You’re rad, you’re helpful, your tutorials are super straight forward, you provide amazing tools that help nerds like me look like I know what I’m doing. Anyway, keep it up and thank you.